Many businesses lack the bandwidth to plan, create, and optimize content at an impactful level. If you’re short on in-house resources, you may be executing your content marketing strategy sporadically with a few blog posts here and there, or letting it languish at the bottom of a to-do list. The problem is, without a cohesive strategy, your company risks losing market share to brands with a stronger digital presence.
If you could use a few more hands on deck without investing in additional staff, you can outsource content marketing. The right provider can help you scale production and hit your targets more quickly.
What Is Outsourced Content Marketing?
When you outsource content marketing, your business engages an external provider to handle your content creation process. This can be for a single campaign or on an ongoing basis. You agree to a set of services with a predefined scope and provide the necessary background to execute the project. Your partner provides deliverables according to a specific timeline.
Depending on your internal capabilities, you can outsource some or all of your content marketing tasks, including:
- Auditing content.
- Developing strategy.
- Researching keywords.
- Planning editorial calendars.
- Creating content briefs.
- Researching, writing, and editing content.
- Optimizing for search engine optimization (SEO).
You can team up with a freelancer or agency.
Freelancers are professionals who work independently. They offer a specific set of skills, but as they work solo, they’re often limited in capacity.
A content marketing agency takes a team-based approach with staff specializing in a variety of skills. They have established processes, enterprise-level tools, and other resources in place to help scale production quickly and precisely.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Content Marketing
Content marketing outsourcing expands your in-house capabilities as needed. You collaborate with a team-oriented partner focused on improving your brand’s online visibility and enjoy additional benefits that drive your business forward.
Access Specialized Expertise
SEO and content marketing require a wide skill set to execute effectively. When you outsource, you supplement your in-house talent with experts in keyword research, strategy, content creation, and search engine optimization. These professionals are dedicated to their practice, drawing on in-depth knowledge to implement your tactics in the most effective way.
Looking outside of your organization can also help diversify your marketing. For example, you might have a staff writer whose strength is creating snappy sales copy but who struggles to create an infographic or produce a video tutorial. Content marketing outsourcing lets you pivot quickly and tap into fresh expertise as needed.
Focus on Core Business Functions
With content marketing tasks in the hands of a well-briefed external partner, your internal team has the resources to accomplish more. They can:
- Fully channel their energies to core responsibilities without the pressure of competing demands.
- Leverage their deep understanding of your business to focus on partnership building, long-term planning, and innovating strategies.
- Take advantage of the increased traffic and visibility from your outsourced content marketing, ensuring your business is well-positioned to grow.
Reduce Costs
When you add employees to your payroll, you pay for salaries, training, office space, and equipment. You must also allocate time for recruiting, interviewing, and supervising their work. The budget increase isn’t often feasible for businesses that have fluctuating marketing needs or only require specialized skills for a certain length of time. Content marketing outsourcing is a flexible and cost-effective alternative to hiring more staff. When you contract a third-party provider, you’re paying for specific services as you need them.
Common Challenges and How To Overcome Them
Working with an external partner is only an advantage if you’re getting tangible results. Keep the following points in mind to lay the groundwork for a productive partnership and make sure you receive quality content that achieves your business goals.
Ensuring Brand Voice Consistency
Your partner should create content that feels authentic and fits seamlessly into your brand. Inconsistency in brand voice can throw off audiences and weaken recognition of your business. To help your partner hit the right tone, provide detailed guidelines that specify your preferred voice, style, and messaging. These guidelines should clarify:
- Tone. Specify whether you want to come across as friendly, knowledgeable, inspirational, or empathetic.
- Word choice. You might prefer simple language to technical jargon or the word “older adult” instead of “elderly.” Include a list of words to avoid as well.
- Point of view. Indicate if the content should use first, second, or third-person POV.
- Style. Provide guidelines around sentence length, comma usage, and formatting.
Include examples of content that you feel embodies your brand voice well to model the right tone, values, and phrasing.
Maintaining Regular Communication
Once your partner is ready to begin work, schedule periodic check-ins so there aren’t any surprises at the end of the campaign. A content marketing agency should collaborate closely with your company, staying in touch and functioning as part of your team.
Most agencies provide formal status reports so you can monitor progress, but occasional meetings and phone calls are also important. Keep the lines of communication open so both sides can bring up questions and concerns. This helps you maintain oversight of the process, provide feedback and guidance, and ensure work is on track with your expectations.
Measuring ROI Effectively
Choose some key performance indicators to measure the impact of your content marketing strategy. This helps you determine your ROI and the value of your marketing investment. You can use ROI to justify your spending to stakeholders and determine what marketing channels your budget is best spent on.
Common content marketing KPIs depend on your goals but typically include:
- Website traffic.
- Organic search rankings.
- Bounce rate.
- Time spent on page.
- Click-through rates.
- Social media engagement.
- Email opens.
- Conversion rates.
- Lead generation.
- Return on investment.
Review these metrics regularly with your partner and adjust your tactics for better results. Content marketing takes time to gain traction, but you should see progress over time.
How To Choose the Right Content Marketing Agency
The right content marketing partner should check off several boxes. They should have relevant expertise, collaborate effectively with your team, and deliver outstanding content. Below are some tips on finding and working with a partner that’s well-equipped to maximize results for your business.
Define Your Goals and Needs
Before you begin talking to potential partners, clarify what you want to accomplish and how a marketing specialist can support these needs. Do you need help creating a strategy from scratch, or are you looking to scale existing processes and generate a steady flow of content?
Start by setting goals, such as increasing website traffic by a specific amount, improving brand awareness, or establishing authority in your industry. This will define the kind of content you need. You might want to outsource ebooks to help with lead generation, blog posts to diversify keyword targeting, or video content to improve engagement.
Determine what you can accomplish in-house and what you need to outsource so you have a clear idea of the expertise you’re looking for. The right agency will customize their services to help you meet those needs.
Evaluate Potential Partners
To find an agency that’s a good fit with your organization, evaluate the type of services they offer, their industry experience, and their track record in delivering results.
Look for Relevant Industry Expertise
While basic SEO and content marketing principles can be applied across industries, an understanding of niche-specific factors can significantly boost outcomes. For example, businesses publishing health or financial topics need to emphasize their reputation and authority to rank well in search engines.
Your partner should be familiar with your competitive landscape and understand its unique trends, opportunities, and challenges. With experience implementing similar campaigns, they can bring valuable knowledge of the tactics that work best for achieving your goals.
Assess Their SEO and Content Marketing Expertise
Agencies have varying levels of expertise. Some specialize in a specific area, focusing solely on content creation, social media marketing, or link building. This can be helpful if you’re looking for a particular service to satisfy your immediate needs, but can limit the long-term effectiveness of your strategies.
A full-service agency offers a range of specialties and takes a comprehensive approach to improving visibility and traffic. While you may not need all of the services right away, you will have the ability to expand your strategy down the road. Your agency will already understand your business and its goals.
Review Their Work
To get a sense of what a potential partner is like to work with and the results they can deliver, look at examples of their previous work.
- Case studies describe how they’ve approached problems and challenges for other clients. These pieces describe the goals of a campaign, the solutions and tools used, and measurable impacts such as increases in traffic, lead generation, and revenue.
- Portfolio samples showcase examples of written, visual, and creative content. Look through the samples for quality and the ability to deliver content in a style or voice that’s similar to your brand.
- Reviews and testimonials offer first-hand accounts of client experiences. These give insight into a partner’s reliability, professionalism, and customer service. If you see consistent mentions of missed deadlines, for example, you’ve found a potential red flag.
Ensure Seamless Integration
Outsourced content marketing should make your work easier, not more difficult. Ask potential partners about their processes. How do they track the status of a project, manage deadlines, ensure quality control, and communicate information? Their methods should integrate with your existing systems and workflow to ensure a smooth working relationship.
Look for signs they’re interested in being a true partner. They should take the time to explain why they recommend certain strategies, welcome your feedback and collaboration, and be responsive to your emails and calls. You should also consider how well the agency fits into your organization’s work style, as you’ll need to work together closely.
Negotiate a Clear Agreement
Put an agreement in place before work begins to avoid misunderstandings. A contract serves as the foundation of your working relationship and ensures both sides are on the same page.
The agreement should clearly outline what needs to be accomplished, including:
- Scope of work.
- Approval stages.
- Revision processes.
- Deliverables.
- Timelines.
- Pricing.
- Payment terms.
Why Victorious Is Your Ideal Content Marketing Partner
If you’re ready to outsource content marketing and explore potential partners, consider starting with Victorious. Our search-first approach to marketing prioritizes your online visibility, with each component of our strategies designed to fuel high-conversion traffic to your website.
Our comprehensive content marketing services include strategy, SEO, content creation, and technical optimization, all customized to fit your needs. We use an evidence-based framework built on years of experience in ecommerce, healthcare, finance, SaaS, real estate, insurance, and other industries.
And we have plenty of case studies that showcase the impact of our work:
- Need more visitors to your site? We helped Eden Health achieve a 270% boost in organic traffic.
- Focused on boosting sales? Learn how our strategies helped Gema & Co. drive a 291% increase in revenue.
- Trying to leapfrog your competitors? Find out how Unboxme outranked Amazon in search engine results.
The key to our success isn’t a secret. We use data-driven insights to inform decision-making and tailor tactics to every business. Every strategy is guided by in-depth keyword research, Competitive Analysis, and user behavior patterns on your website. We create content with purpose and lead users to a specific goal.
Take the Next Step Toward Content Marketing Success
A great content marketing partner does more than ease your workload and generate content for you to publish. With the right expertise, they help you meet — and surpass — your business goals. Lay the foundation for your brand’s growth and explore how Victorious can transform your content marketing strategy. Ready to learn more? Reach out for a free consultation today.
